Bhubaneswar: The Odisha state government today set a target of producing 5 lakh tonnes of potato in the Koraput district through small, marginal and tribal farmers by the end of the 2015 Rabi season. To accomplish the target, a project proposal prepared by PACT (Partners for Agri Communities and Tribal) was discussed at a high-level meeting held here under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Gokul Chandra Pati and attended by joint secretary of ministry of agriculture Sanjeeb Chopra, along with a team of experts.
“Considering the proposal, the Chief Secretary has suggested to include specific action plan for human resource development, seed multiplication, genetic improvement of local varieties and establishment of tissue culture labs in the project,” an official release said.
The Chief Secretary also emphasised on establishment of cold storages in order to encourage the farmers to produce potatoes, the release said adding the department of horticulture has been asked to finalise the project by end of September 2014 and also start field level operations.
The soil and climate of Koraput have been found conducive for potato cultivation both during the Kharif and Rabi seasons and farmers of the district were familiar with the crop and were growing many traditional varieties of the crop, said agriculture secretary Rajesh Verma. Based on these opportunities, the project has been designed to expand potato farming to 50,000 acres involving 8,000 farmers of 200 villages in ten blocks of Koraput district, he said.
The project envisages fetching an annual income of Rs 2 lakh per acre to the farmer through year-round assisted farming and would be monitored through a comprehensive accountable and transparent process built on a world class information and communication technology (ICT) platform, the release said.
This ICT platform would include all processes “from seed to buyer” with on-demand reporting system, it said. The cost of the project has been estimated at Rs 106 crore and it has been decided that the project would be implemented in PPCP (Public Private and Community Partnership) mode, Verma said.
Meanwhile, 18 farmer interest groups have been formed with 868 farmers from 16 villages of Laxmipur, Dasmanthpur and Banhugaon blocks and around 4,000 quintals of 11 varieties of potato has been sown for extensive trails.
